The Bod is to hold a ‘book amnesty’ next week to recover books inadvertently removed from reading rooms.
Students will be able to return books that they have taken from the Bodleian’s non-issuing libraries without incurring a penalty.
The amnesty will happen prior to the installation of new book detection systems at the entrance to the Upper Camera and Lower Camera reading rooms.
Most other libraries in Oxford have electronic tags that cause alarms to go off at the entrance if a person has taken a book out with them.
Vanessa Corrick, the Deputy Head of Reader Services for the Bodleian Library said, “An approximate figure for the number of open shelf books which go missing is 90 in the calendar year 2007.
“It is difficult to be precise about this figure since quite a few books are found when we do an annual check of the open shelf books during the Long Vacation i.e. they have been incorrectly shelved, or have even fallen down behind other books.”
She added, “This is a fairly small figure, although of course we don’t even like one book to go missing.”
English student Julie Jackson commented, “I have never taken any books, I usually photocopy the articles I need, but I can see why people would be tempted to take them.
The security is poor, especially in the Rad Cam, and when people have deadlines to meet all it would take is someone to run out of money on their photocopy card and because it is easy people take the books they need.
“The security is good for only letting in students, you have to show your Bod card but for taking out books, the person on the door asks you to open your bag and can’t possibly recognise every Bodleian book.”
Jackson said, “I know people who have taken books and have just said to the security that they were from another library.”
Corrick also emphasised that students who do return the books will not be recorded or penalised in anyway; “[…] we are not taking notes of who returns material. We would be grateful to have books returned whatever their state as our conservation staff may be able to carry out repairs.”
For those who are struggling to tell whether a book in their possession is from the Bodleian libraries, Corrick said, “There should be a stamp with ‘Bodleian’ on it on books, most likely on the reverse of the title page.”
